up with the sun in the morning
by weatheredlaw
Summary: Yu-Gi-Oh! fic with a daemon twist - a retelling of some of the major events in the Yu-Gi-Oh! series, with the characters having daemons  as seen in the His Dark Materials series . Also with more puzzleshipping because I have an agenda.


**Notes:** some fairly extensive ones, so forgive me:  
>-daemons are extensions of the human soul, manifesting themselves as animals that co-exist with people<br>-daemons will, at a certain time, 'settle' - this means that they stop changing their form as they do when a person is younger.  
>-Yugi's daemon is a female caracal named Keeva; Joey's is a male wolverine named Remiel; Tea's is a male blue-winged leafbird named Puck; Tristan's is a genderqueer stoat named Circe; Solomon's is a female hare named Rhea.<br>-in the HDM series, most characters had daemons that are their opposite gender, but even the author Philip Pullman has revealed that some characters have daemons that are the same gender as they are. this fic explored the concept of same-gendered daemons, but also daemons with no gender, such as Tristan's.

I've been working on this a while - rather, the idea for a while. The fic I just started. Please enjoy - if you haven't read the His Dark Materials series, don't worry.

* * *

><p>Yugi could feel Keeva shiver against him and flit nervously over his lap.<p>

"Stop it," he snapped.

"I'm concentrating."

"Too close," she kept saying. "Too close, it's too close! Can't you _feel_ it?"

"Yes," Yugi said quietly. He fit another piece into the puzzle. "I _want_ to feel it."

"Something's in there." Keeva turned in a circle on Yugi's lap. "Oh, I don't like it. _I'm scared!_"

"We're always scared. It's time to be brave, Kee, understand?" Keeva shivered again and settled into her usual caracal form. She felt safer that way, and it gave Yugi a great comfort to have her there, warm against his belly, the dull point of her claws touching his skin. He paused and took a moment to put a nurturing hand on her head. "It's alright, Kee. We're going to be just fine."

* * *

><p>In the morning, Yugi could not remember anything after that final bit of comfort. He knew that he had completed the puzzle, because it was resting, heavy and purposeful, on his chest. Yugi thought maybe he couldn't move - his arms and legs refused to work properly, and Keeva wasn't stirring at his side. "Kee. <em>Kee<em>, get up!" She lifted her head just above his waist and frowned.

"Tired. Go back to sleep."

"Come on, it's Wednesday. We need to go."

At first, as he tugged off his pajamas and brushed his teeth, nothing felt very different. He remembered, now, more of the night. That he'd made a wish and Keeve had been crying. That he'd been crying. He remembered...light. Maybe from his desk lamp, but it was too _much_ just to be from a bulb. And it had seemed otherworldly, and the air had become sharp with the metallic scent of _time_, of things left in a box for too long. But nothing after that. Just feelings. And too many to think about it.

But he realized it as he was stepping out of the tub and toweling off his hair. He looked over at Keeva, dragging her claws through the last of the bath water. "You settled." She froze. Yugi couldn't tell whether or not he was right just yet - Keeva was almost always a caracal. It was her favorite form, her most comforting form. Yugi scooped her up into his arms and crawled back into bed. The sheets clung to his wet skin and he felt a chill come over him as the air conditioning kicked on. Keeva's nosed was cold on his neck. Her tongue darted out to lap up a drop of water trailing down Yugi's chin.

"Not today," she murmured. "I can't-"

"We'll just sleep today, alright? Just sleep. I promise."

An hour later, his grandfather came up the stairs to find them both passed out in bed, buried under the blankets and clutching one another. Solomon caught a glimpse of the puzzle on Yugi's desk, then the deep, pained expression on his grandson's face. His hare daemon, Rhea, bounded after him into the room and settled boredly at his feet. "He was up all night working on it."

"Maybe. Something's happened." Solomon lifted his daemon into his arms. "You feel it?" Rhea sniffed the air.

"She's settled." Solomon looked from Yugi to Keeva. Quietly, he left the room, shutting the door behind them.

"I think it's best if we left them alone for the day." Rhea hummed her agreement and commented that they needed parsnips for dinner, and that was that.

* * *

><p>Tristan did not understand why they were going to Yugi's house. He liked Yugi. He liked Yugi quite a lot. He'd saved their skins and Tristan wasn't going to be unappreciative, by any means. But sometimes people stayed home. They got sick. Frowning, he touched the tips of his fingers to the top of Circe's head in his pocket. Ze nipped him affectionately. "Stop worrying."<p>

"I'm not _worried_. I just don't get it."

"What's to get?" Circe crawled out of the pocket and headed up Tristan's arm, securing hirself around his neck. Tristan shrugged. "Oh no. It's _him._" Tristan looked toward Circe's source of disappointment and had to smile.

Tea was a very nice girl whose daemon suited her perfectly. Puck was not, unfortunately, one of Circe's favorite daemons to run into. But he was earnest enough, and gentle, and under the impression that he was a rather large vulture, sometimes, according to Tea. She had everything loose in her room put away or secured to it place - Puck was a lively daemon.

"Are you here to see Yugi?" Joey nodded. His wolverine daemon, Remiel, seemed almost comically distressed. Joey reached down and folded him into his arms. "He never misses school."

"Maybe we oughta just let him be, you know?" Tristan stretched. "Might have something catching. Or he might just...not be in the right mood for school. It happens, you know?" Tea nodded.

"I just wanna see him," Joey said. "Or at least know if he's alright."

"Fair enough," Circe drawled in Tristan's ear.

"Stop with the attitude, will you?"

"Hmph." Sighing, Tristan followed his friends to the game shop. The bell rang happily as they entered, and a man who could only be Yugi Muto's grandfather beamed at them from behind the counter.

Tristan looked around the room. It was obvious that they lived above the shop, but how, he didn't know. The entire shop was nearly suffocating, lined wall to wall with games and dice and boxes full of _things_ - cards, card sleeves, figurines, guide books. Anything he could think of that had to do with games, Tristan saw. He looked for some ten-sided die and found an entire shelf full of them. _This is out of control,_ he thought, shaking his head. No wonder Yugi was such a game nut: this was his _life_, in no simple terms. He literally lived with games - it seemed to be in his blood.

"You must be Yugi's new friends." The old man set aside a box of tiles and folded his hands. "Yugi's resting. He didn't feel well this morning, but I can tell him you stopped by." Above them, Tristan thought he saw a bare foot at the top of the stairs, with a tell-tale golden caracal wrapped around the ankle. But in a second, it was gone, and Tristan knew that they should probably have left before they even got there.

"You sure we can't-"

"It's alright, sir, we understand," Tristan said, grabbing Joey's arm. "We'll go. Tell him we said hi, and thank you."

"I will indeed..."

"Tristan. I'm Tristan. This is Joey. You know Tea, I guess." He nodded.

"It's been a while." Tea flushed and held Puck closer to her chest. "Have a good day." The old man went back to his box and back to ignoring them. Tristan nodded and pulled Joey out of the store. He'd felt weird about it from the begining, and he wasn't going to stick around and let things get weirder. Joey complained the whole way home, kicking rocks out of the way until they walked Tea to her house.

"You wanna come to my place?" Tristan offered, after a while of walking in silence. They lingered for a moment outside the door to Joey's apartment building. Remiel continued to look visibly upset about everything around him and crawled up Joey's leg, settling finally onto his shoulders. "You don't have to-"

"Yeah, I'll come over. Your mom making dinner?"

"She'd cook every damn meal for you, loser. She adores you." Tristan grinned and shouldered Joey off the sidewalk. For a while, they just meandered up the street, watching the lights come on overhead and the traffic begin to thin out. Joey, for once, seemed very deep in his own thoughts. Tristan cleared his throat. "So...Yugi."

"Yeah. Yugi."

"He's a cool kid. For a geek." Joey shrugged, but there was a smile on his face. Meeting Yugi had sparked something in him - a bizarre sort of happiness that Tristan found infectious. Even Circe was noticibly less bored with everything around hir. Tristan stretched, scratching his daemon behind the ears.

He figured everyone got to meet someone who changed their life every once in a while. And if for him, that was Yugi Muto - well, that didn't seem like such a bad thing at all.

* * *

><p>Yugi had crawled back into bed when he heard his grandfather send his friends away. He hadn't spoken or eaten at all. "Out of bed," Solomon said, coming into the room after seven. "That's enough of this. I let you have your rest, now it's time to get up."<p>

"I'm tired," Yugi murmured. "My head hurts." He'd wanted to say _my heart hurts_, but decided against it. His heart did ache, like something inside was being slowly pressed down upon, like being suffocated by stones. He didn't want to get out of bed, but the sheets were pulled off of him in a flash and Rhea, who was surprisingly fit for such an old daemon, had leapt onto the bed and was settled calmly on Yugi's side before she bit him on the hip, hard. Yugi yelped and nearly fell off the bed. Keeva's hair stood on end. "What was that for?"

"Time for dinner." Yugi scowled and finally crawled out of bed. He was still exhausted, and he never wanted to move again, but his stomach was empty and he needed something for the pain in his chest.

"I think he knows," Keeva said. Yugi nodded.

"He always does."

They didn't talk about Keeva settling, but Solomon Muto understood enough about his grandson to know that now was not a time for questions. They ate in silence while Yugi fed bits of his food to Keeva from his plate and Rhea nibbled happily on a bowl of shredded carrots.

"You finished the puzzle." Yugi nodded. "And? How do you feel?"

"Like shit."

"_Language_, young man."

"I feel terrible," he said, rolling his eyes. Sighing, Yugi pushed his plate away. "I'm not hungry anymore."

"Finish that. _Now._"

And just like that, things went back to the way they were. They stood in the kitchen later, rinsing the dishes and listening to the radio. When Yugi went to bed that night, he finally picked up the puzzle, admiring his handiwork for the first time, and the way the pieces fit together so seamlessly.

"It's important, Kee."

"It's scary." She touched it with her nose. Yugi was scary. And everything around him was changing all of a sudden - he had friends, Keeva had settled - Yugi wondered if it all really had to do with the puzzle, or if it was just...life, and the way things worked.

He went to bed still not knowing, but woke up feeling like almost nothing had changed at all.


End file.
